Picking a venue

Getting married and planning a wedding seems like a very daunting task but if you do it right or somewhat right, you will be fine. Try not to stress yourself too much and you will actually enjoy planning your own wedding. Weddings are suppose to be joyous occasions not something you’re going to regret in the future. Googling venues is a good start if you don’t know what style you want your wedding to be. Sites like Wedding Wire and The Knot are also wonderful places to go if you want a comprehensive list of venues.

On Wedding Wire you even get to choose what type of venue you want, be it a vineyard or at a country club. We didn’t want to get married at a country club so we ruled that out already.

So that’s another tip, choose a venue together. Wedding planing should be done together and not alone. We tried to pick a place that would do mostly everything they could for us. So they are going to do the catering, the ceremony, cocktail hour and arrange our centerpieces and other things for us before the ceremony starts. We didn’t want to be overwhelmed. Now this isn’t the cheapest way to have a wedding and we knew that but it’s our wedding day and we didn’t want to be stressed out with every little thing. DIYing your entire wedding is a lot of work and very stressful.

One of the places we were looking at was a restaurant and it was very small for intimate weddings. We weren’t going to invite a lot of people so it would have been alright but it just didn’t have the feel of the wedding we wanted. Another place was on a farm which wasn’t really the best since it didn’t hold that many people. And there was this inn we were looking at that didn’t really have a good reception area. The carpet was shabby, dance floor looked old and the ceilings weren’t wedding material. We would have to decorate the ceiling and that would have cost too much money. The chairs were also hideous which would have prompted us to buy seat covers. Seat covers are expensive.

Don’t be afraid to make an appointment with the venue. Don’t rule out a place before you see it. And always remember to take pictures. Take as many as you like. Bring questions with you so you can compare each of the venues. Keep all the information you get from each venue in a binder so you have a reference to choose from. Try to tour every place you go to. Make sure that there are no distractions or unnecessary noise where you want to have your wedding. It’s important to be picky but not too picky. This is an important day for you and you don’t want settling for a place you’ll later regret.

We ended up choosing a venue by the Delaware river, Pen Ryn Mansion. It has a gorgeous view and a beautiful backdrop for pictures. We fell in love with it when we arrived on the property. We wanted this day to be special and we wanted it to be a venue we both liked. The reception room is amazing with gold curtains, nice carpet, nice dance floor and gold chiavari chairs. They even have a nice foyer and cocktail hour areas. We won’t even have to decorate much to make this place look amazing on the wedding day.

Another important thing about food is that you want to make sure that your venue does food tasting on a discounted price. Ours didn’t at first but they added that on later. Make sure to taste the food before the day because you don’t want to be serving food that is too salty or too bland. And make sure to note any food allergies anyone might have. You don’t want anyone getting hurt on your day. The food there included both a buffet and a sit-down dinner. We opted for the sit-down because after my fiance calculated all the costs, it was cheaper than doing a buffet.

Just have fun and don’t commit to one place too quickly. Let it sink it first and it would be wise to visit the venue more than once to make sure that’s the place you want to get married at.